And I did so with no particular advantage(s) over anyone else. I grew up in a crack house in Detroit. My parents abandoned me. I have no college degree. I worked at a car dealership making ~$50,000 per year – until I didn’t.

Those six years of my life I set aside to aggressively save and intelligently invest my capital resulted in financial freedom at 33 years old – which is how I became Mr. Free At 33.

That financial freedom is underpinned by the five-figure and growing passive dividend income my FIRE Fund generates on my behalf.

I aptly named my portfolio the FIRE Fund because it allows me FI/RE (financial independence/retired early).

The Fund is a portfolio built on the tenets of dividend growth investing, whereby I allocate my capital almost exclusively toward high-quality stocks that have lengthy track records of paying rising dividends year after year.

These are world-class businesses. Because of that, they tend to rake in more profit year in and year out. And because shareholders are ultimately the collective owners of any publicly-traded company, growing dividends are our rightful share of that growing profit.

Well, the growing dividends that are sent my way by the businesses I own a slice of are enough to cover my basic personal expenses in life, meaning I don’t need to ever have a job again. Haven’t had one since turning 32 years old. And I have no plans to ever have one again.

What you’ll soon see is the tangible manifestation of all of these concepts I write about.

The table below lists every dividend I received (as well as each respective company that paid it) from the preceding month.

This is real cash money, folks. Every time a dividend comes in, that’s real-life money I can use to do whatever I want with. Now we all know why Mr. Monopoly loved to kick back with a cigar, like a boss.

In all seriousness, though, it’s a phenomenal feeling to know that millions of employees are out there working hard to ensure these companies get their products and/or services out there, which ensures growing profit, which in turn ensures my growing dividend income. I’m very grateful for that.

The employees are high quality. The companies are high quality. The dividends are high quality.

And that translates into a high-quality lifestyle that’s possible via high-quality freedom.

This month’s dividend income is 13.8% higher than the $682.73 I collected in April 2017. The total amount of dividend income I’ve collected in 2018 is now up to $3,850.29.

Almost 14% YOY dividend growth is more than acceptable for me, seeing as how my portfolio is basically in “maintenance mode” from here on out. What that means is, I’m no longer aggressively investing thousands of dollars per month into stocks so that I can chase financial independence. Money is just a means to an end for me, not the end-all and be-all to life.

Much of that YOY dividend growth thus occurred due to the dividend raises these companies handed out over the past year, which means my snowball is snowballing. Snowballs like to snowball. It’s what they do. I just get out of the way and let it roll.

Almost 28 different businesses sent me money in April. And that’s a relatively light month for me. Being able to concentrate on almost anything other than money, because these companies have got me covered, is such a freeing feeling. It’s indescribable. And invaluable.

What I love about these reports is that they show that a few dollars here and there add up. You don’t need to have hundreds of dollars coming in from any one investment in order to pay your bills. Even just a $10.00 check here and there can make a big difference in your life. This is especially true when you’re broadly diversified, which protects you against any small but simultaneous number of adverse events.

Another great month, folks. I’m incredibly blessed.

I hope all of you also had a fantastic April!

Full disclosure: I’m long all aforementioned stocks.

How was your month? How much dividend income did you collect? Is your dividend income (and the growth of it) living up to expectations?

About Jason Fieber

Jason Fieber became financially free at 33 years old through a combination of hard work, frugal living, strategic entrepreneurship, intelligent investing, and geographic arbitrage. He currently lives his early retirement dream life in Thailand. Jason has authored two best-selling books: The Dividend Mantra Way and5 Steps To Retire In 5 Years (also available in paperback).

I can imagine that cut hurts, but Flannery seems like the guy to turn it around. Seems very sharp. I’m sure they’ll be fine.

PM has been a bit disappointing, but they’re positioning themselves about as well as they can. As for MO’s debt, I don’t find it concerning. The balance sheet is actually better today than it was a few years ago in some respects. They’re ably covering their interest expenses.

I love how you phrase things. It was your view on holding pieces of businesses and letting them do all the work for you that really helped me “get” the beauty of dividend investing. 🙂

April was an exciting month for me — my divs more than doubled since last year! 😀 I’ve made some difficult lifestyle deflation choices over the past couple years, but thanks to hedonic adaptation, they’re not as uncomfortable as I expected them to be, and the div progress I am seeing is encouraging. 🙂

Thanks for always sharing your progress, thoughts, and advice with us, so we can learn from your success!

I don’t discuss taxes too often because it’s a topic that’s highly individualized.

That said, qualified dividends are very advantageous in terms of taxation, as I discussed quite a few times over the years over at Dividend Mantra. You’re looking at $0 in taxes if you fall in the 15% bracket or below:

This is very encouraging. Last month my dividend income was over $700 as well. I’m not really in your league as I know you’ve had better months, and it’s taken me an extra 20 years to get here. Still, I feel a special comradery with you now. Once again you inspire.

My passive income averages about $1,300 per month, but it oscillates quite a bit from month to month. These lower months are offset by months like March. As long as the bills get paid, I don’t really care about timing. The money could all come in January. I’d be happy with that.

Keep it up. I’m not aggressively at it anymore. So I’m sure you’ll be blowing me away in no time. 🙂

Jason,
Congrats on your solid results once again! My wife and I are on this journey as well and I can see our FI day just a short time away. I found out a couple of months ago I would be losing my job in a year or so and honestly I don’t care, we will have our dividend machine running along nicely by then. I really enjoy your under valued stock articles and especially your video analysis. I have not seen one of those for a while and was just wondering if you were just taking a break from them or have chosen to discontinue doing them?

And congrats on your results, too. It sounds like you might be more or less “forced” to enjoy FI. That’s not a bad spot to be in. Too many people suffer from OMYS (one more year syndrome). They keep chasing more money, losing a ton of far more valuable time in the process. You might love your job, but your job might not always love you. To be flexible in this position is fantastic. Good for you guys.

As for the videos, they’re discontinued for the time being. They just didn’t really catch on.

Hi. I am 3 times older than you. I am swedish, living in Stockholm and I have played with stocks around 10 years . But Swedish stocks normally pay dividend only once a year so a couple of years ago I found your US stock market .I can tell you life is more fun now with divedend pay outs 4 or 12 times a year . And thanks for your blog Jason . Still, you are just a kid compared to me.

Being born an American is a very lucky thing in many ways. One way is being given access to one of the best wealth generators in the history of mankind – the US stock market. That’s something I’m very grateful for. Although I don’t honestly care if I’m paid once per year or 12 times (all else equal), the constant stream of passive dividend income that’s offsetting my real-life bills is very comforting. I know that I can go about my life as I please. I don’t think you can really put value on that.

Wow! What an inspiring article. Keep up the great work. Can you please also list the dates for your future dividend income updates? I get excited just looking at your list of dividends collected! Well done!! I’m following in your tracks… Just a little behind you. Unfortunately, being in Los Angeles my expenses are way higher than yours lol.

I plan on publishing an update every month, which will be like how I did it for years over at Dividend Mantra. I publicly tracked dividend income from pretty close to $0 to almost where it’s at now. Took a break there for a little bit because I got burned out on these updates, but I feel great about doing them again.

LA is a very different ballgame. Best of luck with keeping expenses low and marching toward FI over there!

Really enjoyed the post, I’m coming kind of full circle with the dividend investing. When I first started out was doing primarily dividend investing. Lately I have been selling options and generating a lot of returns that way. However following the market day in and out and executing a lot trades does get tiring. It’s nice to just get paid for holding a great company and not really have to worry about mr markets mood. I will give everyone one example. I bought chevron in 2014 right before oil crashed. The stock then plummeted. I got in 113. I continued to hold the stock. Currently it’s trsding around 128 so that’s about 12% return in four years nothing exciting. However when u factor in the dividenDs the return is around 21%
Which is pretty good. Just for holding a great company

Even if someone told me I could make more money by trading in and out (which is truthfully unlikely), I’d still take a hard pass on that. I just have so many other things in life I’d rather spend my time on. Worrying/thinking about money/stocks is just pretty much the last thing I’d be interested in.

But to each their own. Other people bending to their emotions and trading is what puts certain stocks on sale at certain times, which is advantageous for me and the companies I’m invested in. So I certainly don’t mind that. 🙂

Meanwhile, I’ll just continue collecting my growing dividend income and going about enjoying my life. Couldn’t imagine doing it any other way.

I am from Germany and 24 yo. It’s my first comment on your website and you really motivated me for DGI. Since starting with DGI I collected around 500€ in 18 months. April is my worst month about the dividend income, it’s only about 12€. However, May is the best with around 132€ and my projected dividend income for the next 12 months will be around 750€ after tax. I am aggressively investing thousands of Euros every month. My short-term goal is to have a projected dividend income of 1200€ p.a. until the end of the year.
Can‘t wait to see the snowball snowballing.

Great to see all is going and growing well. I was putting some thought into investing life the past few weeks and being that I have “been through” my fair share of financial crisis’s since the mid 1970’s when I started working, it would be a good subject for you to cover at some time. A recent example ( most have forgotten ) is 2008-2009 when many companies reduced even eliminated the dividends paid, I have a close friend that lost many 100s of thousands when GM disappeared … I lost Millions literally when the Company I worked for went from $103 per share to $3.00 in weeks back in 2000.
Being diversified is a huge hedge to these events, and is what covered me through 08-09. Its all easy when times are good but being prepared ( AND IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN ) for investment shocks is very important as well. If you pull up a DOW chart you can clearly see huge drops in the market over time.
Keeping your expenses as low as possible helps.

Sorry to hear about that. Never fun to know someone went through a tough time.

Market cycles are inevitable, so being heavily exposed to one particular business is obviously never a great idea. Even great companies can see their business models undergo radical changes in a pretty short period of time.

Diversification is an investor’s only “free lunch”. And if you build up a diversified portfolio of high-quality dividend growth stocks, it’s unlikely you’d actually see an income drop in any given year, due to the rest of the increases making up for a cut/elimination or two. My portfolio’s dividend income would have fared pretty well right through the Great Recession, which is about as tough a test as it gets.

Hello from Los Angeles! Anxiously awaiting your next dividend income update. Love reading them… I find the articles so inspiring. Can you also list the dates you get paid by the various companies? Thank you, your articles Rock!!

I won’t be listing the dates paid. That’s a lot more work for really no reward/reason. If there’s ever a particular dividend’s pay date you’re curious about, it’s easy to ascertain that information. You can go right to the company’s IR site to pull it up. Many third-party sites will also list this info.

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About Me

I'm Jason Fieber, Mr. Free At 33. I became financially free at 33 years old by working really hard, living well below my means, engaging in strategic entrepreneurship, intelligently investing, and using geographic arbitrage to my advantage. I currently live in Thailand, where I'm making my early retirement dreams come true. I write and coach so that I can help others make their early retirement dreams come true.

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